Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (17 page)

“What about some guy named Thompson who works on the ship? Do you know who that is?”

He waggled his hand in front of his face as though he were shooing away a fly. “We got more’n a hundred employees down there in Hollywood. I don’t know them all. Hell, I don’t even know half.”

“This was somebody Nick knew.”

“Nicky was a funny guy, miss. He’s wearing fuckin’ three-hundred-dollar shoes and designer pants and next thing you know he’s laying sod in the planters around the dock or down in the engine room gettin’ all greasy and sweaty with the engineer. Nicky knew everybody who worked for him. Me, I’m in the office all day. On the phone. Nick couldn’t stand being cooped up like that. You could go down to the boat, ask them. Why you wanta know, anyways?”

“Just curious. Zale said his dad used to talk about this Thompson. I’m reaching for any answers here. I really don’t want to have to call that kid in a couple of days and tell him his mom is still in jail.”

The door to the office swung inward just then, almost hitting the chair where I sat, and Roma was shouting, “But you can’t just go barging in” as Janet Pontus burst into the room. “Mr. Quinn, I’m sorry,” Roma said, “but she refused to wait until you—” Janet stepped between Roma and her boss so that Roma was talking to the woman’s back.

Janet Hunter Pontus was decked out in a candy apple-colored sweater with long sleeves and a deep V-neck that exposed her artificially tanned and swelled cleavage. She had blunt-cut bangs and shoulder-length platinum hair. Again, her pouty mouth was slicked over with lipstick the color of a divorcee’s new Corvette with clear coat.

“It’s all right,” Quinn said.

Roma nodded and backed out of the room.

“I need to speak to you,” Janet said in a soft, slow, deep voice, staring straight at Quinn. She was a petite woman with fine wrists and ankles, and the deep voice sounded like a ventriloquist’s joke.

Quinn stood. “All right.” He looked at me expectantly. I did not stand. “We were just finishing up here.” Janet took a small step backward as though noticing me for the first time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, and the voice was suddenly high-pitched, feminine, and soft. She smiled at me and the impact was so strong, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back. She reached out her hand. “I’m Janet Pontus.”

Her grip was confident. “Seychelle Sullivan,” I said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

The light seemed to go out of her eyes and her chin began to tighten. “Thank you,” she said in a near-whisper. Then she dug in her handbag until she produced a white tissue. “I get along fine for a few hours and the hurt almost goes away, and then it hits me again.” A single tear spilled out of her right eye and she dabbed at it so expertly, she didn’t even smear her makeup.

Quinn came around the desk and embraced her, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “There now. You’ve cried enough, honey.” He eased her into the chair next to mine, then returned to his seat behind the desk, but not before trailing his fingers across the back of her neck.

Janet ignored him and spoke directly to me. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just never going to stop crying.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I know what it’s like to lose loved ones.”

She sat in the other chair and fastened those blue eyes on me, nodding. “You, too? Your parents?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never knew my daddy, and mama died when I was still in school. My brother was all I had left. And then I met Nick. It was like I was given another chance to start a family. We had our whole lives ahead of us. So many plans. None of it will be the same without him.”

I watched her closely and tried to find any trace of the self-centered bitch that Molly claimed lived inside this body. I didn’t see it. She seemed to be talking in Hallmark platitudes, but that was because it was what she knew. Jeannie had pegged her, pretty, not too bright, self-obsessed but not very self-aware.

I turned back to Quinn and made a show of glancing at my watch. “I promised Roma I wouldn’t take more than ten minutes of your time. It’s just that there’s one more thing I wanted to discuss with you,” I said and looked over at Janet. “I’m not sure now’s the time . . .”
 

“Say what’s bothering you,” Quinn said. “Mrs. Pontus,” he nodded at her, “is an amazing woman. She’s stronger than she looks, and she has a good head for business. I’m very thankful for that given how things have turned out.”

“I wanted to talk to you about the salvage claim on the
Mykonos
. Have you discussed it with the insurance company yet?”

He made a big show of slapping himself on the forehead. “I knew there was something I was forgetting.”
 

“What about the boatyard? Have you been in touch with them? What kind of shape is she in?”

“I called over there this morning, and they said we were damn lucky. The water she was taking on was back around the shafts. The only other hull damage was cosmetic.”

I could sense Janet fidgeting on the periphery of my vision. Clearly, like most beautiful women, she didn’t like being ignored.

“Did the water reach the engines?” I asked.

“No, very little water damage. They said they might be able to put her back in the water tomorrow. I’ll contact the insurance company first thing in the morning and authorize them—”

“
Leon,
” Janet said, then she turned to me and spoke in a quiet confidential voice. “It’s going to take him a little time to start including me in decisions like this. You know how men are.”

I looked at Leon, then back at Janet. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Mr. Quinn, I really do need to know the status of this claim. If you would like me to contact your insurance company directly, I’d be happy—”

“Miss Sullivan,” Janet said, “we’ll look into it and get back to you as soon as we can. I’m sure we’ll be able to reach an agreement shortly.”

“I’m a little confused here. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t see what you have to say about it.”

She threw back her head and laughed a deep, throaty laugh. Her platinum hair swung around her face when she lowered her chin and fixed me with a big-eyed look I was certain she had practiced in front of the mirror. “You don’t know? Don’t you watch TV? I’ve been all over the news lately.” She laughed that scratchy laugh again. “Go ahead, tell her, Leon.”

Leon stared down at his desk and smoothed his mustache with the fingers of his right hand. Then he cleared his throat. “Miss Sullivan, after his second marriage to Janet here, Nick rewrote his will. We filed that will with the court yesterday afternoon, and in it Nick determined that all his assets are to be equally divided between his wife and his son. Mrs. Pontus here,” he indicated Janet with his hand and a reverential nod of his head, “is now essentially my boss.”

XIV

By the time I pulled into the drive back at the Larsens’ place, it was after four and I was starved. No lunch and lots of driving can do that to me. But hungry as I was, I didn’t jump out of the Jeep and head back to my cottage. I sat in the driver’s seat and allowed myself time to think. I’d gone to Leon to ask him for help finding another suspect, and I walked out of there thinking that he looked the most suspicious of all. There was no doubt in my mind that Leon and Janet had slept together. Was it something that happened when the lawyer was consoling the grieving widow, or had it started while Nick was alive? If that was the case, the only thing that would have stood between him and his boss’s wife was the boss. Beauty-wise, Janet was quite the prize, but now that it appeared that she was going to be worth millions, it looked even more believable that Leon Quinn could have murdered his best friend in order to grab the whole jackpot.

Then of course, there had been that bad gut feeling I’d gotten out at the reservation. Earl Tigertail was a man who carried a truckload of resentment and hatred. The way he talked to Zale about getting rid of the casino gambling ships made me think he had lost touch with reality. Zale was a Pontus heir, but he was still an eighth-grader who had just lost his dad. Was Earl so deep in his cloud of hate and blame that he would have killed Nick to try to seize the gambling boats? I found that idea less believable, but worthy of consideration nonetheless.

There were plenty of other possible suspects, but I had no evidence and no idea what more I could do to help Molly. Yet it made me sick to my stomach to think of her sitting in jail, suspected of murder while a woman she hated was taking over the company that rightfully belonged to her son. I was so far out of my league on this thing—I mean, what the hell did I know about the Russian mafia or contract hit men or how to investigate a murder? There was so much more that I needed to know, like what was the evidence the cops had against her, what were the details of the arguments between Nick and Kagan, and who was Kagan, anyway? Where did he come from? What was his background? I didn’t know how to go about finding any of this information— and certainly couldn’t do it tonight.

I swung open the Jeep’s door when my stomach rumbled for the third time. Maybe I could rustle up a can of soup or something out of the kitchen in the cottage. The last dinner I’d eaten at home had consisted of bread and those plastic-wrapped orange slices of processed cheese. When I took out the cheddar cheese I’d meant to eat with the bread, it was all green and fuzzy. I’d lost track of when I’d bought it. I pitched it and reached for the processed cheese. That’s the nice thing about those square slices. No matter how many years they’re in the fridge, they never go moldy. B. J. would probably say that was because there wasn’t enough organic material to grow mold on.

When I passed through the side gate, my dog wasn’t standing on the other side waiting to greet me, so I suspected my brother was around somewhere. When I came out of the shadows of the path that led along the side of the house, I saw that not only was he there, he wasn’t alone.

“Hey, guys,” I called out across the lawn to the two figures sitting in deck chairs out on the dock, watching the last of the afternoon sunlight leak out of the winter sky.

“Hey Sis, c’mon over for a beer and some sausage.”

Mike Beesting turned halfway around in his chair and waved. I hadn’t recognized him at first because he was wearing his artificial leg, and with his jeans and Topsiders you’d never guess the leg was not his own. Mike was a good friend who had taken early retirement from the Lauderdale Police Department when some crazy city worker decided to get back at the boss who fired him by showing up with a shotgun and two pockets full of shells. Mike had just happened to be passing the scene, and he managed to save several lives—albeit at a mighty stiff personal cost. Mike never complained about it, though. He enjoyed his life aboard the Irwin 54 sailboat that was paid for by the compensation package he’d grabbed on his way out the door. The only thing he ever did complain about was the discomfort of wearing the prosthesis. Nine times out of ten, Mike was hopping around on his boat, with a rum drink in one hand and a grin on his face.

As I walked out to the dock, I saw that they had a Styrofoam beer cooler between them filled with cube ice and green bottles, and balanced on
Gorda
's bucket was a piece of scrap plywood they must have scrounged from the Larsens’ continuous remodeling lumber pile. On the plywood was a large brown sausage cut into fat slices with what looked to be the rigging knife I kept on board my tug. Abaco was sitting, trembling with anticipation, staring at the sausage and occasionally turning her eyes on one or the other of the two men. She was showing extraordinary restraint; somehow, the guys seemed not to notice.

I patted her on the head and told her what a good dog she was, then said, “Well, boys, looks like you’ve made yourselves mighty comfortable.”

Mike pulled a beer out of the ice and offered it to me. “Have one,” he said. “I’d offer you my chair, but I wouldn’t want to offend an independent woman like you.” He and Pit grinned like a couple of ten-year-olds. Judging from the number of empties lined up on the dock, the two of them had been at this for a while.

“No thanks, and I suggest you watch it with those wisecracks.” With my thumb and forefinger, I gave Mike a thump on the side of his head. “You can’t afford to lose any other appendages.” I turned to my brother. “I thought you were going to be bunking aboard the
Firestorm
from now on.”

“Yeah, I am, but I needed to come back here to get my stuff. I didn’t want to show up for the interview with my gear, like I knew I’d get the job. When I saw Mike go by in his dinghy, I hailed him, and he offered to bring me up here to get my stuff. And we were starved, so we stopped off at this little deli that just opened up by the Southport Raw Bar.”

“And all you got was beer and a sausage.”

Pit looked at Mike with a confused look. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

I shook my head, turned around, and crossed the yard to my cottage. And B. J. thought I was the one who had terrible taste in food. Inside, I threw my shoulder bag on the couch, washed up a little, then saw the red light blinking on my answering machine. I pushed the button for the message and got a two-word command in Jeannie’s stern voice. “Call me.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” I said when she answered the phone.

“Seychelle, you have got to get a cell phone.”

“Oh, come on. You know I hate those things. Most of the time the people who need me can reach me on the VHF.”

“You’re losing business, you know. People expect you to have a cell today.”

“I know this is not why you wanted me to call you.”
 

“No.”

“What happened in court today? Is she coming home?”
 

“I’m afraid not. It’s not totally unexpected, but I’m disappointed all the same. Listen, tell me about your day first, then I’ll explain it to you.”

My day, I thought, started out under the fresh clear sky of the Glades. I was free and Molly was sitting in a box, accused of murder. And I felt incredibly inadequate for the job of getting her out.

I told Jeannie the story about dropping Zale off at his great-grandmother’s place, about the uncles, about Earl’s attitude, and about Jimmie’s comment about the Russian mafia as opposed to the Italians.